constipated baby

[Roskva]

Dd has been constipated on and off for the last week. She has 3 200ml bottles a day (and usually drains them), she has sips of water in between, and I have been putting extra water in her puree. Any suggestions? When should I start really worrying about this?

I have been having this problem with dd2 and have started giving her dried apricot puree for breakfast which seems to be doing the trick. How old is your dd?

how old is she?

and if draining her bottles , you can offer more

offer watery foods like melon or pear, also apricot or prune puree can help

bananas can often constipate

try bicycling her legs, and a gentle anti clockwise tummy rub

Hi Roskva, is she just not going enough or is she straining when she is going?

Thanks for the suggestions. She's 11 months.

She's just pooed for the first time since Friday evening - this time it looks normal, earlier in the week it looked like sheep droppings (ewwww).

She has fruit puree at lunch and tea after savoury puree, so I will try some apricot puree with her breakfast. She usually has a rice cake or something similar as well, but I haven't given her those for a couple of days - I'm giving her veg sticks instead.

Mine has decided, like her sister before her, that cereal is the work of the devil so I am now giving her apricot puree with live yoghurt and some oat bran stirred in for breakfast.

When I posted on here about it someone (v sorry I have forgotten who!) suggested stirring a teaspoon of olive oil into food after it has cooked and that also seems to help when we are at the sheep droppings, red faced screaming stage! I also ended up giving her prune juice from a medicine syringe after every meal. Be warned though, it all took about 12-24 hours to work and that meant we then had a 12 hour period of a LOT of poos!

Agree with Lulumama about the tummy rub and also a warm bath relaxes the anal muscles.

Yesterday she was straining loudly and producing nothing!

If I can get her to stay sort of still, I will try rubbing her tummy (but we are talking the renegade of the baby massage class here - games that involve being still are boring, according to dd!)

I ended up going back to the doctor on Friday- typically by the time the appointment arrived she was fine again!- and I now have lactulose to use very rarely when she is really bad and all else fails. I am hoping that we won't ever need it as all this started after a d and v bug that we all had about a month ago. But it is reassuring to have as it is horrible when they are so miserable and in pain, and I was also getting worried that she would start equating pooing with pain and stop trying which would compound the problem.

My neighbour told me that plums are very good for constipation in babies.
I had to lie dd flat on couch while giving her a bottle and dh rubbed her tum. Pushing her legs up and down helped. I do remember her going to the toilet and having to undo her nappy and hold her legs to her chest while she went the poor thing.
Could it be her formula that's doing it?

I don't think so - she's been on nutramigen since Jan because she's lactose intolerant, and doasn't cope well with soya either. This is the first time we've had this problem. I think it started the day after she didn't really want her bottles, and I couldn't persuade to take enough water to compensate for the formula she hadn't drunk, iyswim...

DD was lactose intor as well. Soya is what constipated her in the first place and it took her a good two weeks to get back to herself. She was fine on SMA LF. Poor little thing I hope she gets back to herself soon.

That's a thought - she did have a soya yoghurt yesterday (she usually copes with the odd yoghurt, but gets tummy ache if she has too many)

Dd was constipaeted after two bottles of Soya formula. She had three bottles for two days and it still took two weeks for her to get back to normal so maybe it is the yogurt.